Fri 8th Dec – Chiang Mai (Suthep area)

The two tour activities planned today are a brunch at 10am and a cooking class at 3pm. I ditch the brunch, and it unclear if this is a ‘done’ thing. The risk of being an outsider for the duration of the tour is outweighed by desire to walk around by myself. Looking at Google Maps, I found a temple a 1hr hike up from the base of a mountain, and I elect to walk to the base of the mountain from the hotel and then do the hike up to the temple.

But before, breakfast. At one of the markets near our hotel (Waroot Markets), there was a food stall with three shared circular tables. I wasn’t attracted to the food (congee-like offering) but there were a few groups of Thai people and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Choosing food overseas for me is very much based on the patrons. When you walk past a small place and the seats are mostly full and there are smiles around, it’s going to be hard not to enjoy yourself.

My walk was more or less a straight line, passing through the entirety of the old city, and then through the entirety of a suburb called Suthep. All the while the mountains in the distance slowly grow larger through the smog as I get closer. The route was varied, even though it was primarily on a main road for two hours. The old city took me through the morning arrangements of many tourists. One cafe was advertising a full Irish breakfast, which did make me question the sanity of tourists who choose that in Thailand. Then as I make my way into the suburb of Suthep, I pass a hospital district, an industrial district, a large university and then I am at the foothills of the mountains. The hike is well defined and while it is obviously inclining (being up a mountain), the gradient is forgiving. Despite it not being a challenging hike, I am literally dripping with sweat. It runs off my arms. The hike is quiet for such a large city, and is entirely tourist based. The temple is beautiful at the top, and it looks over the entire city of Chiang Mai. It is rewarding to think I started somewhere at the bottom, a small dot in the smog.

The Chiang Mai Zoo is kind of close to temple, so I get on a songthaew and head down. I don’t have much time at the zoo before needing to leave for the tour group cooking class, and this turns out not to be a bad thing, as the zoo is a bit of a depressing place. There are large swathes of concrete, expanses of space with the jungle encroaching in. There are massive shelters that are decaying, Thai child like jingles blaring from loudspeakers. It is hard to find the animal enclosures. What makes it all the more eerie is that there seems to be no one else here. No one walks around. There is a tram that drives people around, but it only runs every 15minutes so I don’t see it often. The cafes have a single worker and a semi circle of empty plastic chairs around them. I am in the Last of Us Part III, Thailand zoo edition. In about an hour and a half of walking up steep winding concrete roads, I see maybe four animal enclosures.

I then have to get zoo tram back to the entrance in order to make it back to the hotel on time (I don’t). Despite the zoo being apocalyptically deserted, there is a very strict zoo tram system, where you must buy a ticket for a specific number of zones, and amazingly a staff member checks it at each zone. Then at the entrance of the zoo there is a indiscriminate songthaew system. My first attempt proves only to be for primary school children. My second attempt I hail them with my arm up, as normal is Australia. Three pass and wave at me without a consideration to picking me up. I google how to hail and it’s actually with your arm down. Now that I have successfully hailed, the driver can’t read the English language street name of my hotel, and to great relief someone random comes to translate. I am 15minutes late to the hotel, but am shocked I made it back to the hotel at all with the language barrier. The driver receives a large tip from a grateful banker.

The group waited for me and I am chastised for being late. The hostility is particularly strong given I abandoned the group during the day. I am okay with this and secretly they tell me that they are proud of me for making the most of the day. The cooking school that follows is underwhelming to me – pleasant but bland. It doesn’t help that I am exhausted.